Here Today, Gone Tomorrow: A Mixed‐method Study on Headhunter‐intermediated Recruitment Practices

Abstract

While organizations increasingly rely on headhunters, little research has focused on what kinds of employees are contacted by headhunters and how these contacts are related to turnover. This study uses an exploratory sequential mixed-method design to examine what kinds of employees contingency headhunters contact and why some of them leave. Using the case of Japan, where foreign subsidiaries use headhunters extensively to recruit host country nationals (HCNs), we first conducted interviews with 131 clients, headhunters and HCNs (candidates). The findings indicated that the contacts made by headhunters were guided by the HCNs' age, gender, education level, English proficiency, tenure and prior placement by headhunters. The findings also showed that headhunter contacts drive up turnover, and that job alternatives and job embeddedness moderate the relationship between headhunter contacts and turnover. We used these findings and research on the unfolding model and headhunters to develop an abductively derived research model and hypotheses. In another study, we tested these hypotheses by time-lagged survey data from 456 HCNs in foreign subsidiaries. The survey findings showed that headhunter contacts mediate the relationships between English proficiency, tenure and prior placement by headhunters, and that job alternatives and job embeddedness moderate the positive relationship between headhunter contacts and turnover.

Opportunism in headhunter‐client relations: An agency theory perspective

“…Finally, our findings contribute to HRM research on recruitment in foreign subsidiaries. Despite the increasing reliance on headhunters to recruit local talent (Peltokorpi, 2023; Peltokorpi & Froese, 2016), prior studies have overlooked headhunter‐assisted recruitment or assumed foreign subsidiaries to have unlimited access to local talent (e.g., Al Ariss et al., 2014; Crane & Hartwell, 2019). Our study suggests that foreign subsidiaries in countries with tight labor markets and where HCNs make a distinction between domestic and foreign‐owned firms face recruitment challenges and thus need to use headhunters.…”

“…Finally, our findings contribute to HRM research on recruitment in foreign subsidiaries. Despite the increasing reliance on headhunters to recruit local talent (Peltokorpi, 2023;Peltokorpi & Froese, 2016), prior studies have overlooked headhunter-assisted recruitment or assumed foreign subsidiaries to have unlimited access to local talent (e.g.,…”

“…Headhunters are found to present their clients more Caucasian male candidates (Dreher et al., 2011; Judge et al., 1995; Meriläinen et al., 2015). Research also suggests that headhunters can drive up voluntary turnover by offering opportunities to employees who are not otherwise searching for jobs (Finlay & Coverdill, 2001; Peltokorpi, 2022, 2023), “rotating” their previously placed candidates from one organization to another (Peltokorpi, 2022, 2023), and pursuing a strategy of reciprocal opportunism by taking their previously placed candidates from clients (Finlay & Coverdill, 2000). In the UK and USA, headhunters were regarded by clients to be opportunistic about their prospects of recruiting a candidate and less concerned with maintaining a high level of ethical conduct (Nash, 1989; Smith & Sussman, 1990).…”